Oh man, super excited to hear what the 30 series will be about. Will they drop the RTX tensor cores? How much more powerful is it gonna be against a 2080ti? I’m on a gtx 1080 and I’m hoping to make a big jump up in the 30s.

Glad to know you and Mrs Blue are ok! Since there hasn’t been any mention of it, I assume you didn’t suffer any major damage on your property (except the contents of the fridge). After hearing a tornado ripped through, that’s very lucky indeed!

This too shall pass, and soon enough you’ll be back to posting gaming news. Until then, stay safe! All of us assholes may not agree with each other on much, but I’m pretty sure we all agree that we’re more concerned with your wellbeing than the site being updated.

Blue, that sort of BS is why I'm likely to still drive back to Indianapolis to the dentist I had there when I get two molar implants done. They invested in the hardware to not only take digital builds of your mouth (instead of the wax/clay/yuck impression), but they can design the replacement digitally and then, I shit you not, have a machine cut the replacement right then. I've had two crowns done and the entire process happens in one visit, over the course of maybe 3 hours. The machine is like a reverse digital printer, it takes a piece of material that looks like a sugar cube (which has been color matched to the surrounding teeth) and carves it into the digital model. There's no "oops it doesn't fit". They do implants with somewhat the same process, although there's bone grafting and whatnot that has to happen on prior visits first. But the actual implant is made on-site, "while u wait".

I imagine over the next ten years, more and more dentist offices will buy this stuff. It's streamlined their procedures amazingly. I sent my dad there when he needed a tooth crowned recently and he said "It's like I stepped twenty years into the future".

jdreyer wrote on Jul 31, 2020, 15:23:

Beamer wrote on Jul 31, 2020, 15:12:
Don't forget this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtQ_RSF1jYU

As for the target audience, it isn't us. It's rarely us.

Why call it Battletoads then?

Right? I'm not completely against the art style, but if it's going to try to be the same tough-as -fuck gameplay, cartooney graphics rarely allow for precision. Streets of Rage 4 managed to go HD without feeling like it betrayed its roots, so...I'm gonna hold off on my annoyance/old man rage until reviews come out.

theglaze wrote on Jul 30, 2020, 14:02:
Cool!

Although, pre-releases analysis suggests only top-end hardware will be able to push this in VR.

I haven't looked into any of that, admittedly, but with a smart enough LOD system, it might work out better than you'd think. VR headsets aren't terribly high resolution, LOD drops can happen "earlier" and you'd never know it. Half Life: Alyx does the same thing, changing all detail settings and render resolution, moment-to-moment, depending on performance. Granted, that's a game made by a company who was intimately involved with VR's current iterations, but smart LOD systems are being used in almost every game out.

These sorts of games don't really interest me from a gaming standpoint, but oh BOY does it look gorgeous. I'd try it out through Gamepass, but will the windows store version support VR? I guess that's a question for when VR support comes out, eh?

Schitt's Creek and Marvelous Mrs Maisel are both fantastic shows, deserving all the awards.

Schitt's Creek ended at a good point, avoiding overstaying its welcome. We only found out after watching the series that it was apparently a HUGE deal to the LGBTQ crowd. It has a gay relationship in it that isn't there for laughs, and isn't there to cause controversy. It honestly doesn't feel like a big deal because the show doesn't make a big deal out of it. Apparently that's precisely why it's a big deal.

Mrs Maisel makes it look easy to make a period piece show. Seriously, those sets! Filmmakers often say "New York is ALSO a character in this show/movie", but in Maisel, it isn't, because it can't hold a candle to the incandescence of its actors. It makes you give a shit about everyone, even the character that should have been a throwaway "he's why she got on the course she did" husband has a story arc.

The biggest disappointment for me recently was Upload. It has a lot of funny stuff, for sure, but after watching the two shows above, it feels...lazy. Some character's personalities change ENTIRELY just to suit an episode. The only character that doesn't do this is the damn AI Bellhop.

When Halo 4 looks significantly better than Halo 6, You have Done Something Wrong.

This is their flagship title. It's the game they plan to get people to buy new Xboxes with. Compare it to the nuclear bombs Sony dropped with their announcement and you can see why people are disappointed. Doesn't matter if it runs in 4k if it looks old; it just makes the shitty lighting stand out even more.

Compare it to HZD2 (which looks like a marginal improvement only because the first game is visually stunning already) or the new Ratchet & Clank (That was gameplay and cutscenes combined, and they've done their cutscenes in-engine for several games now), and it's just....well, background noise.

I don't understand your hatred of win10, unless you have specific older software that you know for a fact won't run on 10. Aside from that, you just sound like an old man yelling at the sky at this point. MS has almost completely abandoned win7, and fairly so; they promised 10 years of support for it and they met that.

Incidentally, I had a customer come in today who wanted a "new computer with Windows 7", and was SHOCKED when I said we don't have any:
"We aren't going to sell a machine with an OS that Microsoft doesn't support."
"But (some company name) supports it!"
"Ok, but Microsoft doesn't."
"I don't care, what's the difference?"
"Uh...Microsoft MAKES Windows 7, I don't even know the company you mentioned."
(old man grumbling)..."Fine, well, you just lost a sale from me!"

Burrito of Peace wrote on Jul 22, 2020, 06:18:

Barring systemic, organizational issues caused by management, every ethical sysadmin I know wants to keep their servers updated and secure. It's usually a failure of management when you read about public facing servers being pwned.

When a server is compromised, management should be the first on the chopping block.

YUP. Management wants those servers online 24/7, even though their employees don't touch them on nights and weekends, BUT THEY MIGHT! Alternately, a lot of these patches aren't free, and again management can't justify spending money on "something that works just fine".

Satisfactory still on the list, woohoo!

I’m taking a break from it until there’s more content, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have content. I’ve put...an embarrassing number of hours into it.

Cutter wrote on Jul 18, 2020, 15:08:
Those are breeders, not parents. Parents are actually involved in their children's lives and things like that don't happen. Call CPS put the kid in foster care.

Depends on how the kid got access to the money. Did he sneak mom's credit card when she wasn't looking, or did she provide it in the insanely stupid belief that he wouldn't go fucking nuts with it?

Scheherazade wrote on Jul 13, 2020, 01:33:
No idea why it's there, but I almost bought an Index this weekend.

Only thing that stopped me this weekend was that I couldn't choose between the Index (meh rez at144hz) and the PiMax 8kx (4k per eye at 75hz).

Since neither has both high resolution and high refresh, I didn't get anything. I know that either one will make me feel like I'm giving something up.

I currently have a 4k 120hz full chroma IPS display, 48 inch. Not VR immersive, but I don't need to compromise on clarity of fluidity of motion.

I mainly play flight sims, and I average 120+ fps at 4k on a single GPU.
With a second GPU, I could pull 120hz per eye.
As soon as someone makes a VR unit with both 4k and 120+hz, I'm buying.

-scheherazade

You can’t do dual GPU with VR unless the game is made for it. It makes SENSE, because you should be able to do one card per eye, and there’s already support for this in both Unreal 4 and Unity, but no one uses it. I don’t know of a single game that supports VRSLI.
Also VR is a different beast when it comes to refresh rate. Headsets will cut to half framerate the INSTANT they drop under the set framerate. It’s why you can force the index down to 120 or 90fps. It’s better to have a solid 90 than have 120 cut down to 60 when the game pushes too hard.

Index back on top! Nice to see Satisfactory on the list, it's a great game, even though it's currently unfinished.

The "top secret" project is likely the second VR game (out of 3) that Valve claimed to be making. I have serious doubts on their ability to deliver three top-notch VR games, although Alyx was pretty damn great.

Cutter wrote on Jul 8, 2020, 16:02:
I'll consider getting it when it hits the bargain bin and that's only if they do a historical tour for it. Love those things.

That'l depend entirely on how much historical accuracy they bothered with. Origins and Odyssey had vaguely correct locations. This game looks to be even less grounded in reality than the previous ones, although Odyssey did get pretty bonkers in the expansions.

theglaze wrote on Jul 8, 2020, 14:24:
Anyone own this?

I've been reading online about Multiplayer, and it sounds like the game DOES NOT support Steam Friends and you cannot make a party to join online public servers. Instead, you have to create your own server (and thusly port forwarding), or join a public server amd try to invite them into it.

Is that the case still?

That is still the case. This is not a team-play game, so there's little reason to build in that sort of functionality.
Easy enough to browse for a server with enough slots and then have everyone join that one.

The game itself is a blast, especially online. The vehicular carnage is incredible to watch, and on the smaller tracks, it's not a matter of if, but when. There are longer, more traditional race tracks with zero crossover points, they're....fine. Those absolutely aren't the reason to play this game though. The single player game, which is required of you if you want to unlock the absurd vehicles, is nowhere near as fun, aside from a handful of inspired matchups. In the one to get the School Bus, you have to drive a very tiny, fragile car in a 24-vehicle race. The other 23 vehicles are buses. You will know what it feels like to be a chihuahua.

Jonjonz wrote on Jul 8, 2020, 06:22:
This has to be the most inane, naive, sophomoric Op Ed ever posted here.

Yea just what we need, another Great Leap Forward, or equivalent of the the Russian Marxist revolution. Burn everything down and lynch anyone anonymously accused.

One random accusation isn't what it's about. It's about people who say things like you just did, to discredit those who have actually been accused. She never says anything about "burning it all down".
The problem isn't that there's some insane number of rapists in the gaming business. It's that these people have built a support network that keeps them in the business while turning a blind eye to what they do to female colleagues. Although really, this stuff happens in any white collar industry.

Before you guys go into "she shouldn't have had all those drinks, then", which...is true, clearly you've never gotten a "big break". If you manage to get into an industry that's new to you, at a position anywhere above "the very bottom", then you'd know that you initially feel like an impostor. So you watch your coworkers and pretty much do whatever is asked of you so that you can be accepted. While still in this mental state, they take you to an event and hand you drinks. Drinks that, if turned down, are implied to be a great insult to someone who controls whether or not you have that job anymore. And also someone who could keep you from getting another job in that industry. It's a terrible position to be put in.

They’ve got a lot of catch up work to do if they want to even be a shadow of Forza Horizon. Both previous TDU games had absolute garbage physics, which is sort of the entire game.

eRe4s3r wrote on Jul 5, 2020, 20:11:
I got finally around to playing Titanfall 2.. and what an amazing campaign that was. Pure action, super detail level... got all the helmets and finished it on master.. in 8 hours. Man. Glad I paid only 5€ for that

I didn’t get all the helmets but it’s one of very few campaigns that I finished and IMMEDIATELY knew I’d want to play through again. Just fucking fantastic and EA murdered it by releasing it alongside the FAR more heavily advertised Battlefield 1.

If you are reading this and somehow have NOT picked up Titanfall 2, do yourself a favor and grab it during the summer sale. It’s not a long campaign, but it’s rock solid, with a couple masterpiece levels and the rest standing at well above average.

Burrito of Peace wrote on Jul 4, 2020, 21:53:
How to fix shitty wifi in one simple step:

Use a network cable.

YUP. Wifi is convenient but unreliable. You won't find any business running mission-critical devices off wifi, and in the rare case they DO, they've gone to extreme measures to make sure it works well. Apple stores, for instance, that open-area design with all-wood tables is like that FOR A REASON, and it's called "wood doesn't make a complete shitshow of your wireless signal".